rabble.ca - Ed Finnhttp://rabble.ca/category/bios/ed-finn
Ed Finn grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the Western Star. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the Toronto Star. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.
enDeliberate deforestation of Amazon rainforest exposes anti-climate capitalismhttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/09/deliberate-deforestation-amazon-rainforest-exposes-anti
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/48594167912_c67f6f3690_k.jpg?itok=Vu_fEJtB" width="1180" height="600" alt="Satellite image of fires burning the Amazon rainforest on August 11 and August 13, 2019. Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr" title="Satellite image of fires burning the Amazon rainforest on August 11 and August 13, 2019. Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The outbreak of thousands of fires in the Brazilian rainforest starkly exposes the refusal of the world's business and political leaders to take the threat of climate change seriously. For the past 30 years, at successive climate summits, they have piously pledged to curb greenhouse gas emissions, never really intending to make more than token efforts to do so.</p>
<p>Their duplicity was on display at the recent G7 conference, where the countries' leaders collectively promised to donate $20 million to fight the Brazilian inferno. That's about as effective as arming the firefighters with toy squirt guns.</p>
<p>Of course, even if they had increased their contribution to $20 billion, it would still have been a useless gesture. Most of the fires were deliberately ignited, and will continue to be ignited after the current blazes are extinguished, regardless of the amount ostensibly contributed for firefighting.</p>
<p>That's because the big international mining, logging and farming corporations that the Brazilian government has invited to exploit the country's jungle need thousands of acres of open land. And that requires the equivalent acreage of deforestation, which is most easily accomplished by setting the forest alight. The country's far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, like most of his predecessors, makes economic development a top priority, even when it involves the discharge of massive amounts of harmful carbon dioxide and methane, and the eventual depletion of indispensable oxygen.</p>
<p>Here is where the nub of the climate crisis is exposed. The damaging effects of these emissions are not confined to the country that emits them. They ultimately impair the well-being of everyone on the planet.</p>
<p><strong>Capitalism vs. the climate</strong></p>
<p>To deal with such a worldwide menace calls for worldwide unity in mounting effective countermeasures. Unfortunately, we live on a planet whose population is dispersed among 195 separate countries, with different sizes, systems of government, laws, leaders, languages, religions, and climates, as well as differing levels of poverty and inequality.</p>
<p>As if all these barriers to forging a global convergence were not formidable enough, there's another one that is even more daunting. It's the main reason why our business and political leaders have remained so adamantly inactive in confronting climate change: <em>because the world's predominant economic system is based on the perpetuation of economic growth, and thus inherently on the perpetuation of global warming.</em></p>
<p>Capitalism can only thrive -- or even survive a few decades longer -- while economic growth remains unlimited and continuous. It's a disastrous fantasy that assumes our planet's natural resources are inexhaustible when they clearly are not. As thousands of world scientists have pointed out many times over the past 50 years, "Earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing populations is finite. <em>And we are fast approaching many of these planetary limits."</em></p>
<p>These repeated warnings by climatologists have gone unheeded by world leaders because they conflict with the basic precept on which capitalism is founded -- that corporations must be left free to accumulate the largest possible amounts of profits, power and prestige. Regardless of how much the planet's climate is contaminated.</p>
<p>Politicians and CEOs who adhere to this ultimately cataclysmic ideology -- the vast majority of them -- are never willingly going to make any serious attempt to curb its devastating damage to the climate. To them, capitalism is a sacrosanct creed that must always be followed, even if it leads inescapably toward a colossal lemming-like march to the abyss.</p>
<p><strong>Corporations set political agenda</strong></p>
<p>It is only with this revelation that we can understand what has really been happening in Brazil. It's an all-too common event in a world in which corporations wield complete political as well as financial power. A world in which most governments serve the interests of big business rather than interests of the voters who elect them.</p>
<p>In such a world, dominated economically and politically by capitalism and splintered among so many countries, the president of just one country is free to chop and burn down the planet's "lungs" without any fear of being stopped by the other 194 countries that are being adversely affected.</p>
<p>Hypothetically, the countries whose corporations are deforesting Brazil, and thereby accelerating the climate crisis, could order them to stop doing so. But in a world where governments basically permit corporations to pursue profits however and wherever they can -- and even help them do so -- that hardly ever happens. Only when a corporation's excessive greed becomes so blatantly obvious and injurious that it can no longer be excused will some political constraint be exerted, and occasionally fines imposed.</p>
<p>Given the global dominance of capitalism, then, it is difficult to conceive bright prospects for the future. If we had a world government with a worldwide democratic socialist economy -- sort of a globalized Sweden -- instead of 195 disparate and often feuding nations, capitalism would not even exist, and neither would climate change.</p>
<p>Instead, we have a predatory global economy in which profit-making and avarice prevail. If something can be exploited, developed, produced and sold for a profit, it keeps getting produced and marketed, regardless of the many baneful and catastrophic consequences.</p>
<p>We therefore live in a world in which:</p>
<ul><li>Deforestation is profitable.</li>
<li>Extracting and burning fossil fuels is profitable.</li>
<li>Global warming is profitable.</li>
<li>Depleting non-renewable resources is profitable.</li>
<li>Pollution is profitable.</li>
<li>War is profitable.</li>
<li>Illness is profitable.</li>
<li>Poverty and inequality are profitable.</li>
<li>Offshore tax havens are profitable.</li>
<li>Junk food is profitable.</li>
<li>Low wages are profitable.</li>
<li>Unsafe workplaces are profitable.</li>
<li>Purchasing politicians is profitable.</li>
</ul><p>Conversely, any program or policy that would benefit most people, but not make a profit for the rich and powerful -- e.g., clean air and water, fair wages and pensions, elimination of poverty -- will be rated very low on corporate and political "to-do" lists, especially in countries (and provinces) ruled by ultra-conservative autocrats. Corporate-controlled governments, far from curbing the economic and environmental ravages of these corporations (such as SNC-Lavalin and Bombardier), instead lavish them with billions in subsidies derived from workers' tax payments.</p>
<p>Despite these somber reflections, I still cling to some semblance of hope for the future. But the grim reality is that capitalism and a clean climate are clearly incompatible.</p>
<p>Climatologists give us another 11 years before reaching the crucial tipping point beyond which any further effort to avoid Armageddon will be futile. The likelihood of capitalism being toppled before 2030 may seem absurd, but miracles occasionally do happen.</p>
<p>Let us pray.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer's apprentice, reporter, columnist and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em>Western Star<em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em>Toronto Star<em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Image: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/48594167912/in/photolist-2h36P8f-2h1vCzF-2gYjUwi-2gzH44H-2h2M12Y-2gJDkoW-2gGBJad-2gEfVKN-2gEfMPC-2gzjQQK-2fYp7oe-TKQYmo-2evaRLZ-2fwnqhG-2e9nRxe-2epBt1w-2fqSJbA-2fqSJ7C-Tni1sy-2e7DTng-RK9ggT-24TZGBg-2e7DThB-2epzzoW-2fvyjX6-2e7DTd8-24TZGnt-24TZGjT-2fvyjLK-2gdDXhL-2g9Liay-2fLDfoC-2eb2kRP-24TZGKH-24TZGni-2fvyjL4-2fvyjKT-TjNJEE-2ekSHsm-TbUk73-2e6b8Xu-2e5tXdd-2dg18fM-243bHHc-SgfNbN-2dhNqFE-2ejfAuu-QCwPpg-SfHPc7-2ejfaro" target="_blank">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr</a></em></p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 04 Sep 2019 15:18:19 +0000the views expressed164861 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/09/deliberate-deforestation-amazon-rainforest-exposes-anti#commentsPredicting federal election results may be dicey, but discerning the best outcome is nothttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/07/predicting-federal-election-results-may-be-dicey-discerning
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/Green_Party_canvasser_May_2011_1.jpg?itok=Ztne3h2V" width="1180" height="600" alt="Green Party canvasser in B.C. Photo: Vancouver Ghost/Wikimedia Commons" title="Green Party canvasser in B.C. Photo: Vancouver Ghost/Wikimedia Commons" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>With media pundits and political junkies confidently foretelling the results of the October federal election, it may be considered presumptuous for a mere blogger like me to even speculate on the outcome.</p>
<p>I am not, however, a complete political neophyte. Perhaps a brief account of my career in politics may help bolster my credentials as a soothsayer.</p>
<p>I became the country's first provincial leader of the NDP in 1959. That was in Newfoundland, three years before the founding of the national New Democratic Party; but, by naming our new provincial party the <em>Newfoundland</em> Democratic Party, we could use the same three initials. I subsequently campaigned as an NDP candidate in two provincial and two federal elections, coming within 250 votes of winning the second time I ran in the provincial riding of Corner Brook West.</p>
<p>If I merit even a footnote in the history books, it would be for the distinction of preceding Tommy Douglas as the country's first "NDP" leader.</p>
<p>I actually received a compliment on that account from none other than Pierre Elliot Trudeau. In his book <em>Federalism and the French Canadians,</em> published in 1968, he chided socialists in Quebec for failing to follow my 1959 example.</p>
<p>He wrote that their concern about avoiding "nationalistic deviationism" "obviously went too far when it precluded the Quebec left from exploiting the same type of elementary opportunity as that which permitted the launching by Mr. Ed Finn of <em>a</em> new party in Newfoundland, even though <em>the</em> new party had not yet fired the starting gun."</p>
<p>He gave me too much credit, since that feat came from a combined effort by progressives and union activists in the province, not from a solo exercise by me.</p>
<p>In any event, the Newfoundland NDP officially affiliated with the federal NDP at its founding convention in 1962 in Ottawa, where our delegation was warmly welcomed by its eminent first leader, Tommy Douglas. Tommy and I became good friends. He later joined me in a speaking tour of Newfoundland, and I reciprocated by joining him in a speaking tour of his home province of Saskatchewan.</p>
<p><strong>The birth of medicare</strong></p>
<p>Tommy is especially renowned today as the "father of medicare." He introduced the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Act in the provincial legislature in 1961, and shepherded it through its early stages. After resigning to become leader of the federal NDP, he felt safe in leaving the bill's future in the hands of his successor as premier, Woodrow Lloyd.</p>
<p>Its passage, however, ignited a firestorm of opposition that raged for months. It was so fierce and defamatory that Lloyd delayed the act's implementation from April 1, 1962 to July 1. But the delay only intensified the fury of its opponents, who launched a vituperative propaganda campaign financed by the Chamber of Commerce, Liberal and Conservative MLAs, the Canadian Medical Association, and about 600 of the province's 900 doctors.</p>
<p>I was plunged into this maelstrom when the Canadian Labour Congress, my employer at the time, and Tommy himself asked me to hop on a plane to Regina as fast as I could. They thought my experience as a journalist would help counter the vicious wave of anti-medicare denigration that was sweeping the province.</p>
<p>As soon as I arrived in Regina, I saw how terribly one-sided the public relations battle had become. The well-funded foes of public health care had full access to the commercial media in perpetrating their fear-and-scare tactics. It was almost impossible to get the favourable side of the medicare debate covered by the province's press and broadcast outlets. The <em>Saskatoon Star-Phoenix </em>had even refused to publish pro-medicare letters to the editor.</p>
<p>It wasn't that the provincial unions and progressives were lacking in their efforts to counter the anti-medicare onslaught. On the contrary, they were successful in helping pro-medicare citizens' groups set up a strong Citizens for a Free Press brigade. Its members fought valiantly to persuade the media to stop violating the basic precepts of fair and honest journalism.</p>
<p>Still, I felt that an ad hoc pro-medicare publication was also needed, and provincial Federation of Labour president Walter Smishek agreed with me. We quickly launched our own tabloid paper, <em>The Public Voice, </em>which was widely distributed door to door across the province by union members and by members of the many Medical Care Committees that had been set up.</p>
<p><em>The Public Voice</em> clearly explained the public health-care bill, stressed its obvious advantages over private health care, and effectively debunked the lies and distorted claims being disseminated by opposing doctors and their political and business allies.</p>
<p>I don't want to exaggerate the role this tabloid played in the eventual collapse of the anti-medicare forces and the passage of the historic first public health-care program in Canada. But I do think it helped turn the tide in favour of public health care and toward the eventual spread of public physician and hospital care across the country.</p>
<p><strong>Tommy's hopes dashed</strong></p>
<p>My reminiscences about the birth of medicare 57 years ago may seem irrelevant to the outcome of the upcoming federal election, but in fact it has a great deal of relevance.</p>
<p>Why? Because Tommy Douglas was not satisfied with a breakthrough in public health care that was confined to the services of doctors and hospitals. He anticipated that prescribed drugs, dental and vision care, and all the other components of a comprehensive health-care system would be added within the next 10 years or so, to match the complete coverage already prevalent in almost all other developed countries.</p>
<p>Instead, to the shame of Canada's subsequent political leaders, and sadly including the NDP, our health-care system remains inexcusably incomplete. Not even one of the provinces later governed by the NDP -- in B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Alberta -- ventured to emulate Tommy's historic initiative.</p>
<p>The federal Liberal government has belatedly promised to implement some form of national prescription drug coverage, but is suspiciously vague about timing and details. Given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's tendency to break previous major pre-election promises, there's no guarantee he won't scuttle this one, too, if his fans give him enough votes to win re-election.</p>
<p>NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has also unveiled a pre-election health-care plan, this one offering much more extensive coverage. His promise to publicly fund universal vision, dental, hearing, and mental health care, as well as pharmaceutical drugs, would certainly raise Canada's health-care system to the all-inclusive level already enjoyed by the citizens of other developed nations.</p>
<p>Regrettably, however, the NDP has sustained such a steep drop in voters' support over the past decade that its prospect of forming the next government in October has to be rated at absolute zero. And the worst aspect of this decline is that much of it was self-inflicted. The party abandoned or diluted many of the progressive principles and practices that its founders in the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation) had enthusiastically embraced at its founding convention in 1933, even going so far as to purge the word "socialism" from its political vocabulary.</p>
<p>Its leaders came to believe that the party's prospects could best be enhanced by moderating its policies and moving from the left to the mercurial centre. They evidently forgot that this territory is where the Liberals have been deeply entrenched for decades. It was a disastrous miscalculation that in 2015 prodded many thousands of usually staunch NDP supporters to switch their votes to the Trudeau Liberals.</p>
<p>It may be that many of these previous NDP voters will be so disillusioned by Trudeau's broken pledges and by his abominable misconduct in the SNC-Lavelin affair, that they will return to the NDP fold in October. But I don't think so. I think many thousands will instead decide to transfer their votes to the Green Party, as I intend to do.</p>
<p><strong>The case for going green</strong></p>
<p>And that, at last, brings us to the crux of this pre-election colloquy, which is to consider the compelling reasons for voting Green on October 21.</p>
<p>1. The soaring frequency and intensity of tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, floods, droughts, and other destructive weather events starkly expose the folly of further neglecting the ominous threat of climate change.</p>
<p>2. Climatologists have warned world governments they have only another 15 years at most to stop global warming from rising to a catastrophic level that could devastate and even destroy human civilization.</p>
<p>3. Of all the federal political parties in Canada, only the Green Party has steadfastly targeted global warming as the pre-eminent issue that all governments should prioritize. The other parties put it further down their priority list until recently, when the noticeably sharp rise in public concern about climate change finally impelled them to raise it to at least the election promise level. Even the Liberals' skimpy carbon tax lacks the requisite urgency, falling far short of the level that Canada pledged to attain at the UN's Paris climate conference.</p>
<p>4. More and more young Canadians have come to be alarmed by the frightful extent that global warming -- and the older generation's inaction and apathy -- now pose to their future security. They are joining the ranks of the climate activists, and many of voting age will be casting their first ballots for the Greens in October.</p>
<p>5. Support for the Green Party led by Elizabeth May has surged over the past few years. With 17 elected members provincially and federally, holding the balance of power in British Columbia, forming the opposition in P.E.I., and gaining party status in New Brunswick, the Greens are on the march.</p>
<p>Many Canadians, although favouring the Green Party's valiant efforts, may be reluctant to vote for a minority party that has no chance of forming the government. They may regard it as a wasted vote. They should keep in mind, however, that even the election of another six or seven Green MPs will serve to send a strong message to the other parties that failing to take climate change seriously is now a politically ill-advised blunder.</p>
<p>Even more crucial is the likelihood that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives will win a majority in this election. The Liberals will certainly lose a lot of seats, and many of the party's erstwhile supporters may decide to "go Green" instead of voting for the struggling NDP or the right-wing Conservatives.</p>
<p>That could result in a Liberal minority government, with the Greens holding the balance of power, as they have been doing provincially in B.C for the past few years. Such an outcome would surely enable the Greens to prevent Trudeau from repeating the breaches of propriety that marred his first four years in office. It would also ensure that in his second term the environment would receive the treatment that the climate crisis so urgently demands.</p>
<p>The Greens are not a one-issue party, as they have sometimes been unfairly painted. In a minority government where they can exert strong pressure on a re-elected Liberal party, they can be expected to press for the same expansion of public health care as the NDP. Health care could likely be a high priority for them, superseded only by their dedication to tackling climate change. </p>
<p>Admittedly, my speculation about the results of the October 21 election falls short of reaching a prediction. But, although it is based more on hope than calculation, I would argue that my anticipation of a minority government with the Greens wielding positive legislative pressure is not entirely without merit.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em>Western Star<em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Green_Party_canvasser_May_2011.jpg" target="_blank">Vancouver Ghost/Wikimedia Commons</a></em></p>
</div></div></div>Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:58:27 +0000the views expressed163061 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/07/predicting-federal-election-results-may-be-dicey-discerning#commentsInstead of squabbling over scarce jobs and incomes, we should jointly strive for a fair economic systemhttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/06/instead-squabbling-over-scarce-jobs-and-incomes-we-should
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/NYC_ShutItDown_People%E2%80%99s_Monday_march_for_Berta_Ca%CC%81ceres_May_Day_2017_in_New_York_City_%2834270594722%29.jpg?itok=CQ8UfrVd" width="1180" height="600" alt="NYC ShutItDown People’s Monday march for Berta Cáceres in 2017. Photo: Alec Perkins/Wikimedia Commons" title="NYC ShutItDown People’s Monday march for Berta Cáceres in 2017. Photo: Alec Perkins/Wikimedia Commons" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>There's an African proverb that is becoming uncomfortably apt to apply to many workers and citizens: "As the waterhole becomes smaller, the animals get meaner."</p>
<p>In other words, as basic needs dwindle, so does the willingness to share what's left. The merits of community and co-operation are superseded by a selfish survival-of-the-fittest mentality.</p>
<p>A big difference, however, exists between what happens at a shrinking waterhole in Africa and what happens in Canada when good-paying jobs are reduced, incomes fall or stagnate, and government services are cut back. The African waterhole gets smaller because of a drought. It's a natural and unavoidable phenomenon. In Canadian society, however, the necessities of life for the most vulnerable among us are being deliberately restricted.</p>
<p>Our welfare "waterhole" is being siphoned away, its contents inequitably transferred from the pockets of the poor into the bulging bank accounts and stock portfolios of the rich and powerful.</p>
<p>There is no shortage of money in Canada. Our per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- the country's entire financial output -- has more than doubled over the past 50 years. But its dispersal has been ruthlessly skewed to favour the most opulent among us. Corporate executives, bankers, major investors and financiers wallow in wealth, much of it derived from taxpayer-funded billion-dollar bailouts of big corporations.</p>
<p><strong>Maldistribution of income</strong></p>
<p>That a barbaric maldistribution of income leaves millions of citizens, including hundreds of thousands of children, destitute and undernourished doesn't bother the elite in the least. Their cherished capitalist system inevitably creates many more losers than winners, and always will. That's its chief purpose. So the diversion of income from the needy to the wealthy is welcomed, and the wealthy can count on their right-wing political minions to block or minimize significant poverty reductions.</p>
<p>In the past, prior to the global expansion of capitalism, picking on the marginalized and poor was not something that could be done with impunity. Corporations were confined to the country of their origin, and subject to political and social constraints on their power and greed. Strong unions prevented them from underpaying their employees. Most people -- even many of the rich themselves -- would have been shocked by today's obscenely inequitable distribution of income and the widespread misery it inflicts.</p>
<p>Today, thanks to "free trade" and the global expansion of high-tech communications, corporations have been freed from economic and regulatory limits on their insatiable profit-making -- free to move their operations to countries with the lowest wages, lowest taxes, lowest environmental standards. This planet-wide omnipotence also enables them to exploit their power over subservient governments and weakened unions in their home countries, where wages stagnate, inequality soars, poverty pervades, corporate taxes decline, and pollution rises.</p>
<p><strong>Corporate oppression unchallenged</strong></p>
<p>One of the worst outcomes of this corporate oppression has been its abject acceptance by so many of its victims. Yes, there are protests by activist groups, complaints about service and funding cuts, valiant attempts to help the many casualties. But these efforts are mostly confined to mitigating the harmful impacts of the dominant capitalist system, not targeting that insidious system itself.</p>
<p>As long as progressive activists continue to accept the calamities of runaway capitalism as unpreventable, then their many protests, though admirable on their own, will be ineffectual.</p>
<p>As for those who now consider resistance to corporate power futile, many have unfortunately decided to embrace its pernicious "survival of the fittest" practice. They resent anyone who seems to be faring better than they are in the current jungle-law economic system. Instead of striving for a fair income for everyone, they try to catch up to and financially surpass the co-workers and neighbours they now perceive as rivals and competitors.</p>
<p>It's one of the baser instincts fostered by a baneful socioeconomic system that puts individual competitiveness above communal co-operation.</p>
<p>Many human animals, it seems, also tend to get meaner as their personal economic waterhole gets smaller. They don't blame the bloated plutocrats who greedily suck up the largest share of the country's fluid assets. They turn their wrath instead on those who are competing with them more effectively for what's left in the national financial "pond" after it's mostly slurped up by the powerful plutocrats.</p>
<p>If they are employed by a private firm, they resent public employees enjoying higher wages and better pensions. If they work in the oil and gas industries, they resent efforts by environmentalists to reduce harmful carbon emissions.</p>
<p><strong>Of mice and men</strong></p>
<p>It's eerily reminiscent of a laboratory experiment I once read about in which sadistic scientists provoked naturally peaceful mice to fight among themselves. This was done with an extended colony of mice which coexisted in harmony as long as they all had enough to eat and drink.</p>
<p>Gradually the scientists reduced their supply of food. They wanted to find out at what lower level of sustenance the mice could be induced to "compete" for their dwindling rations.</p>
<p>Eventually, of course, growing hunger turned the biggest and strongest mice against the weaker ones. At first they simply nipped at them and drove them from the food and water containers. Then, as the food was drastically curtailed, the attacks became fiercer. The weakest mice eventually died, either from their wounds or starvation.</p>
<p>Thus was a stable and co-operative community of mice converted into a war zone in which the strongest prevailed over the weakest.</p>
<p>Like these lab mice, the weakest and poorest among us have also been subjected to a contrived reduction of their collective means of livelihood. They've been forced to make do with fewer good jobs, lower incomes, declining services.</p>
<p>Many of us in the middle class, too, though not victimized to the same extent, also struggle in underpaid and insecure jobs with minimal benefits, living precariously from paycheque to paycheque.</p>
<p>There's a vital difference, however, between us and the mice. We're more intelligent and not as powerless. We don't have to react as they did. We don't have to be goaded by the corporate lab technicians to fight among ourselves for the fair share of the national income that has been as ruthlessly withheld from us as was the food and water from the mice.</p>
<p>Instead, we have to stop diffusing our immense potential power. We have the inherent ability to co-operate and collaborate, to consolidate our collective force and focus it decisively against our plutocratic tormentors.</p>
<p>Yes, we face a monumental corporate Goliath, against whom an individual David is helpless. But if we can jointly muster all our protest "slingshots" on a global scale and wield them together, it's possible that even the mighty neoliberal capitalist system could be toppled.</p>
<p>We'll never know, however, unless we stop squabbling and start mobilizing a massive, united, unstoppable civilian crusade.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_ShutItDown_People%E2%80%99s_Monday_march_for_Berta_C%C3%A1ceres_May_Day_2017_in_New_York_City_(34270594722).jpg" target="_blank">Alec Perkins/Wikimedia Commons</a></em></p>
</div></div></div>Thu, 20 Jun 2019 16:27:18 +0000the views expressed162466 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/06/instead-squabbling-over-scarce-jobs-and-incomes-we-should#commentsBogus concerns about pharmacare's affordability contrived by conservatives to block or delay ithttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/06/bogus-concerns-about-pharmacares-affordability-contrived
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/Pill_Bottle_Spilled_0.jpg?itok=xJM64Cie" width="1180" height="600" alt="Photo: Mpelletier1/Wikimedia Commons" title="Photo: Mpelletier1/Wikimedia Commons" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Conservative politicians and pundits are questioning the feasibility of adding pharmaceutical coverage to Canada's public health-care system. "How can our governments possibly afford such a huge additional expense?" they ask.</p>
<p>They are asking the wrong question. Here are some of the proper questions to ask:</p>
<p>How have the other economically advanced countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand, been able to afford comprehensive public health care, including dental, vision, hearing, and other health needs, as well as pharmacare?</p>
<p>How can our federal and provincial governments jointly afford to spend $29 billion a year in subsidies to large corporations, including $3.3 billion annually to the big oil and gas companies?</p>
<p>How can the federal government afford the mega-billions in bailouts it periodically lavishes on SNC-Lavalin and Bombardier, and in the past on the big automobile manufacturers?</p>
<p>How can the federal government afford to spend over $4 billion to purchase an oil pipeline?</p>
<p>Why have our governments, while increasing business subsidies, proportionately reduced their spending on social services? Why does Canada now rank a dismal 24th on the OECD's list of its member countries' social spending at just 17 per cent of GDP, compared to rates ranging from 23 per cent to more than 40 per cent by other countries?</p>
<p>The answers to these crucial unasked questions would expose the right-wingers' cavils about pharmacare's affordability as completely bogus. So would the fact that Canada's per capita GDP -- the country's gross domestic output -- has more than doubled the constant dollar amount it was 50 years ago. There's more money than ever before available, but now it's being far more inequitably distributed.</p>
<p>The alleged shortage of public funding for pharmacare (and other necessary health services) has been callously contrived by continually enhancing the wealth of the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pill_Bottle_Spilled.jpg" target="_blank">Mpelletier1/Wikimedia Commons</a></em></p>
</div></div></div>Tue, 18 Jun 2019 15:29:25 +0000the views expressed162356 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/06/bogus-concerns-about-pharmacares-affordability-contrived#commentsLack of illness prevention system forces us to keep immune system strong on our ownhttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/06/lack-illness-prevention-system-forces-us-keep-immune-system
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/25830636648_a67a094721_h_0.jpg?itok=hLyMk8GV" width="1180" height="600" alt="Grapefruit half. Photo: Push Doctor/Flickr" title="Grapefruit half. Photo: Push Doctor/Flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><em>This is part two of a two-part series in which journalist Ed Finn offers up advice for leading a long and healthy life. Read part one <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/05/growing-old-no-longer-great-feat-staying-old-and-healthy" target="_blank">here</a>.</em></p>
<p>Canadians are living longer, with current life expectancy now averaging 82. The most recent Statistics Canada data I can find reports that 749,000 Canadians have lived into their 80s, and 280,000 into their 90s, with women significantly outnumbering men in both those categories. (Of the 280,000 nonagenarians, more than 200,000 were female.)</p>
<p>But StatsCan can't measure the <em>well-being</em> of these senior citizens. One of its studies found that the health of most Canadians starts to deteriorate at the age of 69, but the extent and cause of that decline varies considerably at the individual level and is not measureable. Obviously, it depends on the different internal and external determinants of health that affect each of us, and whether we can exert any control over them.</p>
<p>But even when we eat well, exercise, and do our best to avoid illness, we can still be incapacitated by one of Shakespeare's "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." In either case, the "golden years" turn out to be not even bronze.</p>
<p>We've all heard the old cliché that "there's only one thing worse than growing old, and that's not growing old." But there's another eventuality that is arguably worse: growing old <em>and</em> sick.</p>
<p>That's the sad fate of far too many of our senior citizens. So many that our nursing homes, long-term and palliative care institutions can't accommodate all of them. Thousands are bed-ridden or otherwise incapacitated, many in their own homes or the homes of their children.</p>
<p>I cite this unpleasant reality, not as an inevitable consequence of aging (it isn't, by any means), but because I believe that most of the ills associated with old age are preventable. Well, not indefinitely, of course -- we all have to die of something, sometime -- but for much longer than the age at which many of our elderly now succumb.</p>
<p>This is not a new concept. Some geriatric specialists and health reformers have been arguing for years that the priority should be to <em>prevent</em> ailments rather than trying to alleviate them after they occur. Such a switch would not only improve and prolong life spans, but also save many billions of dollars now spent on remedial surgery, drugs, hospital stays, and home care.</p>
<p><strong>Left on our own</strong></p>
<p>In the absence of such an emphasis on prevention, we are basically left to fend for ourselves. Many people, however, are not free to choose the kind of wholesome lifestyle they would prefer. They can eschew bad habits, but if they're poor, not well-educated, unemployed, or mired in menial and low-paying jobs, with arduous family responsibilities, their quality of life is largely beyond their control.</p>
<p>They need help from local, provincial, and federal governments, but such caring and progressive politicians seem to be in short supply in Canada. When it comes to promoting good health -- apart from efforts to discourage tobacco use and drunk driving -- most politicians are pretty much content to let Canadians look after themselves -- at least until they get sick enough to require the services of doctors, hospitals, druggists, and old-age homes. </p>
<p>Staying well on our own is an onerous responsibility. Even those among us who are financially well-off are not invulnerable to the dangers of an increasingly contaminated environment. Much of our water and soil is polluted, and the air we breathe is laden with toxins that are inimical to our health. They are so pervasive and are carried so widely by air and water and in the food we eat that, short of living in a glass bubble, it is impossible to avoid them.</p>
<p><strong>Our powerful personal defence</strong></p>
<p>Fortunately, nature endowed each of us at birth with a tremendously powerful defence mechanism -- the immune system -- which in theory (and for some of us in practice) can repel or destroy even the most dangerous microbial attackers.</p>
<p>A progressive U.S. physician, Dr. Ronald Glasser, wrote a book many years ago titled <em>The Body is the Hero,</em> in which he argued that, for most forms of illness, all a doctor can do for a patient is help the immune system do its job. And that job is to prevent the patient from getting sick in the first place.</p>
<p>Think of the immune system as an engine that, like all engines, operates most effectively when provided with the best fuel and maintenance. There was a time when it was possible for someone to do that simply by eating the right foods -- foods rich in all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that the body and its immune system require.</p>
<p>But that was a time when such natural organic foods were widely available, when so many people were not crowded into cities and workplaces conducive to the spread of disease, and when the air, water and soil were not contaminated. Today, much of our food is grown in denatured soil drenched with toxic pesticides and herbicides, then "processed" in ways that leach out much of its natural goodness.</p>
<p>And this has happened while our bodies are exposed to thousands of harmful chemicals, smog, and pollution -- and thus more urgently in need of a strong immune system than ever before.</p>
<p>The traditional medical system has been scoffing at this alleged need for a stronger immune system for a long time, even ridiculing Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling when he advocated taking daily megadoses of Vitamin C to complement the deficiency of that essential vitamin. But many recent studies have confirmed the therapeutic benefits of this and other vitamin and mineral supplements, especially those with antioxidants that help the immune system stave off carcinogens.</p>
<p>I started a supplementary vitamin/mineral/herbal regime about 60 years ago. It may be just a coincidence that I've never been seriously ill since then -- and I know I'm tempting fate by even alluding to my ongoing wellness! -- but I'm convinced I would be far less healthy today if I hadn't.</p>
<p>Some skeptics would claim it was be an example of the "placebo effect" where candy pills have a health-inducing effect because the patient<em> </em>believes they do -- but I don't think so. Neither does my family doctor, who, after finishing my annual checkups, always says with a feigned sigh, "Sorry, Ed, but I still can't find anything wrong with you." The time will ultimately come, of course -- mortality being unavoidable -- when he will have a much less positive prognosis for me, but, until then, I continue to enjoy my life a day at a time.</p>
<p>For millions of other seniors, however, the older they get, the more their health deteriorates. They become victims of a pseudo health-care system that perversely is fixated on "treating" sickness and searching for elusive cures instead of helping people stay well. So doctors, pharmaceutical companies, hospital administrators, nursing home owners, medical equipment makers -- even the scores of public charitable organizations -- all operate on the assumption that "health care" begins only <em>after</em> people get sick. Whether they admit it or not, the grim fact is that they all have a vested interest in sickness, not health.</p>
<p>This is not to denigrate the dedication and integrity of the professionals who staff our health-care system. In the toxic-stew environment we're now immersed in, and in the absence of preventive and protective measures, their services are indispensable.</p>
<p>But surely it would be far better to have a system that puts a priority on helping people avoid illness. It would be far less costly in the long run to eliminate hunger, poverty, and the other social causes of ill health than to try to cope medically and belatedly with their terribly debilitating effects.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, such a beneficial reversal of our profit-driven system of "health care" will never happen as long as the lack of preventive measures benefits the powerful corporations and organizations that run it.</p>
<p>We are therefore left to do the best we can, as individuals, to maintain our own health and keep our immune systems as strong as possible. That includes the ingestion of nutritious unprocessed food, supplemented daily by at least a good multivitamin and mineral capsule. </p>
<p>In the absence of collective efforts to support a preventive approach to health care, our immune systems need all the help we can give them on our own.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/150669121@N05/25830636648/in/photolist-FmyLmh-orkrqN-TLnLhP-9YtKa4-o9SBMM-fJ5FYw-EHBBq-8Lbd2T-bTnAc2-bu336P-6fTenT-saT3h2-6msWWE-6fTgbX-7xsnGS-6fXqVu-4yGpyY-rRAL9X-c4AaBm-5AksyZ-csJ9R7-64SoyS-97RCZw-dgaXqq-R7LEKT-saSWHM-re8GEi-4Ppt2N-rTn79A-s8DeDq-4N4xc3-ay1uow-3JneLk-egaJ7e-4nwYBb-rdW5dy-9wPQSK-96G5RN-68gXg8-5Aq4oQ-saWcu8-4MZihK-8UQht5-9NCVbb-9nmm4d-Sv4Y35-4N4tSs-csHnwL-5Bngtf-sLFt8" target="_blank">Push Doctor/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 22 May 2019 15:44:54 +0000the views expressed161361 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/06/lack-illness-prevention-system-forces-us-keep-immune-system#commentsGrowing old no longer a great feat, but staying old and healthy ishttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/05/growing-old-no-longer-great-feat-staying-old-and-healthy
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/15951452813_02e1eb47ed_k_0.jpg?itok=j1eSL1TH" width="1180" height="600" alt="Group of men laughing. Photo: David Bergin/Flickr" title="Group of men laughing. Photo: David Bergin/Flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><em>This is part one of a two-part series in which journalist Ed Finn offers up advice for leading a long and healthy life. </em></p>
<p>As I approach my 93rd birthday while still remaining in good health, the requests increase that I divulge the "secret" of my longevity.</p>
<p>My flippant response is usually that it takes patience -- that all you have to do is wait long enough.</p>
<p>But of course one's longevity is determined by a host of different factors. Inherited genes, lifestyle, physical and mental activity, and even luck are all decisive factors. Every human being is different. We all have different parents, different upbringings, different qualities of life, different incomes, diets, strains and stresses. So the determinants of good health that helped prolong my life span don't necessarily apply to others.</p>
<p>But there are two vital prerequisites that I think <em>do</em> apply to most people.</p>
<p>One is to maintain as much as possible a good sense of humour.</p>
<p>The other is to maintain as much as possible a strong immune system. </p>
<p><strong>A lively sense of humour</strong></p>
<p>Admittedly, a jocular disposition is sometimes hard to preserve, especially during the rough periods that we all have to go through; but whenever it is normal and natural to laugh, let's not stifle our mirth. Exuberance can be amazingly beneficial to our health -- and a lot cheaper than anti-depressant drugs. As Dr. Patch Adams always claimed, "laughter is the best medicine."</p>
<p>Readers who have seen the movie <em>Patch Adams, </em>a real-life physician played by Robin Williams, know that he wasn't a traditional doctor. Although many of his patients were seriously or chronically ill, he often showed them funny movies. The antics of comedians such as Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, and the Three Stooges made them laugh. Even the sickest of them chuckled.</p>
<p>Patch Adams didn't believe that laughter could <em>cure</em> these patients, but he was convinced that it had a marvelously salubrious effect. It alleviated their distress and often stimulated their recovery.</p>
<p>I confess to having a predilection for making puns, to which my relatives and friends usually respond with groans. But the pun has been indulged in by writers, poets and playwrights for at least the past six centuries. Shakespeare's plays are riddled with hundreds of puns, much more than the books of other famous authors who punned a lot, including Lewis Carrol and James Joyce.</p>
<p>Even Jane Austen got in the occasional pun, as when one of her heroines complained that "My home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. I saw enough of Rears and Vices."</p>
<p>My latest pun was prompted by the prominent stoop that I've developed. It's a legacy of the more than 80 years I spent bending over typewriters and computers. I assure everyone, however, that I have not become a full-fledged hunchback -- just a quarterback.</p>
<p>If you groaned at that one, too, here are a couple of others that I consider practically groan-proof:</p>
<p>During my time as a reporter for the <em>Montreal Gazette,</em> I was assigned to do a story on the perennial problem of persuading passengers to move to the back of the bus or streetcar. I put the problem in a historical perspective, noting that Noah even had trouble getting the animals to move to the back of the Ark.</p>
<p>And when the Greeks rolled their wooden horse to the gates of Troy, the soldiers jammed inside balked at moving to the rear. The crush became so bad that one of the soldiers was accidently stabbed by another warrior's spear.</p>
<p>When the Brigadier saw how badly the soldier was bleeding, he yelled out: "Is there a doctor in the horse?"</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>While a few friends and I were visiting New York, we strolled past the city's magnificent public library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. We were puzzled to see, at each side of the entrance, the huge statue of a lion.</p>
<p>"What have lions got to do with a library?" one of my friends wondered.</p>
<p>The answer suddenly came to me. "Why, it should be obvious. The statues were put there for the benefit of library patrons who like to read between the lions."</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>While I was editor of the quarterly newsletter of the condominium of garden homes where I live, we had a problem with several residents who walked their dogs, but failed to scoop their poop. Our board of directors was bombarded by complaints from other residents who inadvertently stepped in piles of excrement.</p>
<p>I rebuked the culpable dog owners in the next newsletter, urging them to pick up after their pets. It seemed to have the desired effect, but maybe it was at least partly because of the heading I put on the editorial: "We're having too many close encounters of the turd kind."</p>
<p>I don't have room to include any more of the puns I consider among my best (or least <em>pun</em>ishing), but I remain as convinced as Patch Adams that humour in all of its whimsical forms is a significant promoter of longevity. </p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/friend0o/15951452813/in/photolist-qiznbv-F5Zip-RVXwo-5hRiKN-a2R2mh-8x6LkH-6VV1g5-r3ugNd-dNN1XJ-3Ae4k-8rAAfA-bXenPF-q4UxYf-6WDnYG-9pJWmf-ddWTCo-aDTTn9-9tXU1u-95VvzM-6ZSwVP-dDcvYc-4CCUM1-qu2zR1-a9wfTr-aPWQu-4NQ3MU-7hSmdP-8Am3TQ-aMwok-4xjKDY-434Ah-cjB5Hu-7WwDkj-3inB7b-7jf5z6-4MtHX8-Ksnk5-5ciNbK-k6zeBq-medmq-8iqWf-8GPXUH-ceYBGu-bsLmSr-cp3v4-7sZeJc-bywgqk-2ebTrQS-F5cKb-qrQbA7" target="_blank">David Bergin/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 22 May 2019 15:41:04 +0000the views expressed161356 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/05/growing-old-no-longer-great-feat-staying-old-and-healthy#commentsAs processed food displaces nutritious food, more people gain weight and get sickhttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/05/processed-food-displaces-nutritious-food-more-people-gain
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/6319155216_0463fda84a_b.jpg?itok=wHOJ2ABV" width="1180" height="600" alt="Fast food. Photo: SteFou!/Flickr" title="Fast food. Photo: SteFou!/Flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The rate of obesity in Canada has risen to epidemic proportions, with one in eight of us now clinically obese and nearly half of us weighing more than we should. And it's not because people are indifferent to weight gain. Far from it. The exercise and weight-loss business is booming, and diet books are consistently near the top of the bestseller lists.</p>
<p>I deeply empathize with those who are battling weight gain. A few decades ago ago, my unhealthy eating habits had also bulked me up by an extra 80 pounds. Weighing 250 pounds, with most of the additional fat packed around my waist and thighs, I was clinically obese. Belatedly but resolutely, I decided to rid myself of that excess poundage. And with the invaluable help of my wife Dena and a medical diet specialist, I succeeded.</p>
<p>It took nearly three years for me to trim back to my previous 175-pound size. Eschewing junk food, converting to a primarily vegetarian diet, and with Dena's culinary expertise, I have never again exceeded this salubrious weight level. In addition to my now healthy diet, I also "work out" on a stationary bike in front of our TV set for 20 minutes or a half hour most weekday evenings. That's usually between 7 and 8 p.m., so I can watch <em>Jeopardy </em>and <em>Wheel of Fortune</em> and exercise my mind at the same time.</p>
<p>I now attribute much of my ongoing health and longevity to my heart's great relief that it is no longer compelled to pump blood to an extra 80 pounds.</p>
<p>I know from experience how difficult it is to avoid weight gain in today's processed food culture, and how much more difficult it is to shed the excess pounds after they have been acquired. In my case, I knew it was a combination of a sedentary occupation, lack of exercise, and indifference to the quality, caloric content, and nutritional value of the foods I ate. But why was it so easy to fall into this kind of seductive eating trap and so difficult to escape from it?</p>
<p><strong>A diet designed to make us fat</strong></p>
<p>The short answer is that the modern Western diet is conducive to -- is arguably <em>designed </em>to -- make people fat. It lures us into eating more meat, more snacks, more processed foods, and less fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. It's loaded with added sugar, salt, and "preservatives." It's a high-caloric prescription for poor health as well as a pot belly.</p>
<p>When you add to today's deleterious diet the baneful effects of chemical pesticides and herbicides, the depletion of fertile soil, and the conversion of whole foods to "refined" foods, you get the answer to both the obesity epidemic and the rising rates of related disease.</p>
<p>In an essay in the <em>New York Times </em>magazine a few years ago<em>, </em>Michael Pollan, author of <em>The Omnivore's Dilemma,</em> boiled down his recipe for a healthy diet to these three brief directions: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."</p>
<p>By eating food<em>,</em> he meant sticking to real food and avoiding fatty foodlike substitutes like breakfast-cereal bars and non-dairy creamers. "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food," he suggested. It's good advice, if easier said than followed.</p>
<p>Pollan urged that we emulate the residents of Okinawa, Japan, who base their diet on what they call "Hara Hachi Bu," which translates as "eat until you are 80 per cent full." In other words, get used to smaller portions.</p>
<p>Eating mostly plants, he noted, and treating the occasional piece of meat as a side dish, means you'll automatically be consuming fewer calories. "Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores," he pointed out, "but near-vegetarians are also as healthy as vegetarians."</p>
<p><strong>Staying alive with ill health</strong></p>
<p>There's a big deterrent to be overcome, however, in switching to a healthful way of eating. Today's standard processed diet has become so entrenched that it is now widely accepted as nutritious. And because it is loaded with sugar-sweet glucose and readily available at restaurants and grocery stores, it has become almost as addictive as heroin or cocaine -- and as hard to quit.</p>
<p>By the time many thousands consuming this tasty but pernicious diet become overweight and seriously ill, it's too late to become vegetarians. In desperation, they then have no choice but to turn to our health-care system to help them. </p>
<p>"Modern medicine," writes Pollan, "is learning how to keep people alive whom the Western diet is making them sick. It's gotten good at extending the lives of people with heart disease, and now it's working on obesity and diabetes. Capitalism is marvellously adept at turning the problems it creates into lucrative business opportunities: diet pills, heart-bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery.</p>
<p>"But, while fast food may be good business for the health-care industry, the cost to society is unsustainable," Pollan insists. "The cost to the health-care system in the U.S. of treating the victims of diet-related diseases is estimated at more than $200 billion a year."</p>
<p>Because of Canada's public provision of medical care, the cost of the diet-related ills incurred by people in this country would not be as high as a proportionate $10 billion a year. But even discounting the "free" treatment by doctors and hospitals after they get sick, Canadians suffer as much from junk food consumption as their American counterparts. So the other steep costs -- life-extending drugs, home care, lost work time, less income, etc. -- would certainly amount to at least an annual $5 billion in Canada.</p>
<p>It would be a stretch to infer that the conversion of our diet from nutritious food to unwholesome food is a deep, dark capitalist plot. It's not. But it's undeniable that the big corporations that grow, process, refine, salt-and-sugar-stuff, calorie-maximize, and sell the foods that make us sick derive enormous profits from doing so.</p>
<p>And it's equally irrefutable that the more people are sickened by malnutrition, the more the drug companies, the pharmacies, the high-tech health-care hardware makers, the doctors and nursing home operators benefit financially.</p>
<p>The bottom line: any system, no matter how harmful, that enriches the executives and major investors of such powerful corporations is never going to be changed from above. Not as long as profit-obsessed capitalism remains the dominant economic system. So it's up to each of us, as consumers, to take charge of our own diets and our own weight.</p>
<p>As I found out, that's very difficult -- but it can be done.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen-oung/6319155216/in/photolist-aCpjG1-e7f6bp-ebkphj-efB7dM-6jwVni-7z8Fpp-YjvXiG-7z8FtH-7z8Fbr-wt3ju-ctEFNu-Sh7bZd-dUqJrd-DPcap-rxVsih-28kqbpW-8eyUzp-rtkCJB-GLPrvm-8BbEWn-8ghTGV-c2aAZQ-bsLMZz-c39Ej9-vnuCp-6bDLBR-2fiiyYe-f1DQYi-cNvMMw-9naxya-4tD1Jb-iJbxEG-4Bk1Ls-j1Ccg6-a16c8p-99aif9-XyygAh-dZHFEA-2Sj9P6-9e22Nk-htcZ52-o4ALKi-27x3Zmf-8ZwCgw-83p6Cr-2XTVVF-dZBYdr-4ajXSs-6qx8y3-r8WrA4" target="_blank">SteFou!/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Tue, 21 May 2019 21:09:48 +0000the views expressed161311 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/05/processed-food-displaces-nutritious-food-more-people-gain#commentsGovernments that borrowed interest-free from Bank of Canada now incur massive debts borrowing from private bankshttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/04/governments-borrowed-interest-free-bank-canada-now-incur
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/3529137867_8ed89f17f5_o.jpg?itok=NiZ4uwNW" width="1180" height="600" alt="Bank of Canada. Photo: d.neuman/Flickr" title="Bank of Canada. Photo: d.neuman/Flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Most Canadians are not aware that, prior to 1975, the construction of major public facilities, as well as the provision and improvement of social programs, were funded by interest-free loans from the Bank of Canada. Such loans helped Canada recover from the Great Depression of the 1930s and to achieve a prompt and prosperous economic boom after the Second World War.</p>
<p>The construction of the Trans-Canada Highway, the St. Lawrence Seaway, modern airports and seaports, and other essential parts of Canada's infrastructure were all accomplished with Bank of Canada loans. And because they were essentially interest-free, they caused only a small increase in the government's debt.</p>
<p>After 1975, however, when Ottawa abruptly started borrowing from private banks instead of "the people's bank" for large public projects, the steep interest rates it then had to pay built up steadily mounting debts.</p>
<p>Most provincial and municipal governments, too, although the Bank of Canada could also have legally extended loans to them, have piled up massive debts from private bank loans over the past four decades. Our governments at all levels are now collectively paying some $60 billion in interest on these debts every year.</p>
<p>"This enormous debt burden need never have been incurred," says George Crowell, a retired University of Windsor professor. "It deprives our governments of revenue that could be used instead for much-needed improvements to our social and economic services."</p>
<p>Instead, both Liberal and Conservative governments not only flatly refuse to resume borrowing from the Bank of Canada, "but also use their deliberately incurred debts as an excuse for cutting public programs and services instead of preserving and expanding them.</p>
<p>"At the same time," Crowell notes, "they keep reducing the tax rates on profitable corporations and wealthy individuals who don't need tax relief -- and many of whom evade the taxes they owe, anyway, by stashing their wealth in offshore tax havens."</p>
<p><strong>Ford and Edison favoured government funding</strong></p>
<p>Political and business leaders scoff at Crowell and other knowledgeable monetary critics, even dismissing them as impractical idealists or even "crackpots." I could continue to quote the irrefutable arguments that Crowell and other financial experts advance for going back to the pre-1975 Bank of Canada borrowing system, but instead will quote the salient views of two famous Americans: industrialist Henry Ford and inventor Thomas Edison.</p>
<p>Ford and Edison were great friends. They often met to discuss current events and issues, including the construction of the huge Muscle Shoals water plant on the Tennessee River in 1928. They both claimed that this massive public edifice should be funded by the federal government rather than by borrowing from the private banks. They regarded the charging of high interest rates by the banks as a form of usury that caused social and economic inequities.</p>
<p>Were Ford and Edison daydreamers or left-wing crackpots? Decide for yourself after reading the following excerpts from their interviews with the press.</p>
<p><strong>Henry Ford's interview</strong></p>
<p><strong>FORD:</strong><strong> "</strong>Army engineers say it will take $40 million to complete this big dam, but Congress is not in a mood just now to raise that amount through taxation. The customary alternative is to float 30-year bonds at 4 per cent. That means the United States government, to obtain $40 million to finance construction of a great public benefit, will have to go to the private money-sellers to buy its own money.</p>
<p>"At the end of 30 years, with compound interest, the government not only pays back the $40 million, but it has to pay 120 per cent in interest. It literally has to pay $88 million for the use of $40 million for 30 years. Think of that! Could anything be more outlandish, more unbusinesslike?</p>
<p>"Now I see a way by which our government can get this great work completed without paying a nickel to the money-sellers. The government needs $40 million. That's 2,000 20-dollar bills. Let the government issue these bills itself and with them pay every expense connected with construction of the dam. When it's completed, we get the whole works running and, in a shorter time than you would suppose, the entire $40 million can be retired out of the earnings of the plant."</p>
<p><strong>Thomas Edison's interview</strong></p>
<p><strong>Reporter: "</strong>What do you think of Henry Ford's proposal to finance Muscle Shoals by an issue of currency instead of bonds?"</p>
<p><strong>Edison: "</strong>A splendid idea! Let us suppose that Congress follows his proposal. Personally, I doubt that Congress has imagination enough to do it, but let's suppose that it does. The required sum is then issued directly by the government, as all money ought to be. When the workers are paid, they receive these U.S. bills, which will be the same as any other currency put out by the government -- that is, they will be money.</p>
<p>"The bills will be based on the public wealth already in Muscle Shoals, and they will be retired by the earnings and power of the dam. That is, the people of the United States will have all that they put into Muscle Shoals and all that they can take out of it for centuries to come -- <em>with no additional taxes and no increase in the national debt.</em>"</p>
<p><strong>Reporter:</strong> "But what if Congress doesn't see it that way? What then?"</p>
<p><strong>Edison: "</strong>Then Congress must fall back on the old way of doing business. It must authorize an issue of bonds. That is, it must go out to the money brokers and borrow enough of our own national currency to complete this and other great national projects, and we must pay interest to the money brokers for the use of our own money. In other words, under the old way, any time we wish to add to the national wealth, we are compelled to add to the national debt.</p>
<p>"Now that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $40 million of our own money, the people of the United States should be forced to pay $88 million. People who will not turn a shovel-full of dirt nor contribute a pound of material to Muscle Shoals will collect more money from the U.S. government than will the people who do the work and supply the material.</p>
<p>"That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our bond issues, the interest is always greater than the principal. All of our great public works cost more than twice the actual cost on that account.</p>
<p>"But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. What makes the bond good also makes the bill good. The difference between the bond and the bill is that <em>the bond lets the money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond plus an additional 20 per cent,</em> whereas the currency pays nobody except those who contribute directly to the construction of the Muscle Shoals dam in some way.</p>
<p>"It is absurd to say that our country can issue $40 million in bonds and not $40 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurers and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the government was no good, then the bonds would be no good, either.</p>
<p>"It is a terrible situation when the government must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold."</p>
<p><strong> * * *</strong></p>
<p>Despite these compelling arguments by Ford and Edison for government funding of the Muscle Shoals dam construction, the U.S. Congress instead went ahead and borrowed the $40 billion from the private money-lenders at high interest rates, enriching them with $88 million of taxpayers' money. Ford and Edison, despite their fame and financial expertise, could not match the overwhelming political influence of the banks, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and other big investment firms.</p>
<p>The same profligate private-borrowing system still prevails in the United States, and, since 1975, also in Canada. And the irrefutable case for government funding put forward by Crowell and other progressive financial analysts in this country are as rudely dismissed by our government as were the equally powerful arguments made back in 1928 by Ford and Edison.</p>
<p>Such a horrific and needless mass transfer of billions of dollars from taxpayers to the banks and money-brokers is even more inexcusable in Canada than it is in the United States. <em>We actually had an effective and virtually interest-free system of funding large public projects prior to 1975, before the Bank of Canada was callously stripped of that immensely beneficial public function.</em></p>
<p>It's interesting that the provisions in the Bank of Canada Act that originally authorized the Bank to fund public projects have never been deleted from the Act. The Bank could therefore resume that advantageous operation any time a federal government directed or permitted it to do so.</p>
<p>However, given the preference of our predominant neoliberal parties to coddle and subsidize the banks and big corporations rather than improve Canadians' standard of living, that's not likely to happen any time soon.</p>
<p>Or at least not until a great many more Canadians become aware of the enormous and inexcusable waste of billions of their tax dollars that is incurred by needlessly borrowing from private banks instead of the People's Bank.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dneuman/3529137867/in/photolist-6nRKJB-aS7WCM-d3ZKFG-8FYtw3-2x1MFF-7xFaVY-34ng9J-GPw26e-2x1TLM-2x1Snx-7z6y7t-93crRQ-brZYTW-9SyPJd-Mhjk4-2f4QeEg-KkfpFi-8NvGXn-21Pik6Y-ceyFHJ-8NvHxv-Vu21Tx-7mixMY-26Z6jB7-7z6xyv-7zajq9-7BUi6u-7zaj5b-etuV7F-dT85Mf-5yJRqg-bYLim9-S7QHk-7zak4h-dT85QY-S7QEP-4RSQFL-S7QDp-7xuBu7-aiuEou-8NvJqp-Xt92Q8-8NyMJY-WDGDTL-28n7cQq-9Nn3gn-dukWPW-nEkFg7-pXNPuN-yTy8LA" target="_blank">d.neuman/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 17 Apr 2019 14:00:35 +0000the views expressed159866 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/04/governments-borrowed-interest-free-bank-canada-now-incur#commentsCancers are preventable but won't be if it requires curbing the profits corporations reap from sickness http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/04/cancers-are-preventable-wont-be-if-it-requires-curbing
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/3489151194_e7be6f754b_b.jpg?itok=rHBKrAIO" width="1180" height="600" alt="Equipment in doctor&#039;s office. Photo: Morgan/Flickr" title="Equipment in doctor&#039;s office. Photo: Morgan/Flickr" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>It is now generally agreed upon by health specialists that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/17/cases-cancer-avoidable-environment-lifestyle-disease" target="_blank">many cancers are caused</a> either by exposure to radiation or by carcinogens that have been spewed into the environment. In contrast, relatively fewer cancers can be traced to defective genes inherited from our parents.</p>
<p>Although cancers caused by exposure to radioactivity are not nearly as prevalent as those caused by exposure to environmental toxins, they do sicken thousands of people. Radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power plants has risen to a global stockpile of 260,000 tonnes, and is growing by some 10,000 tonnes a year, according to the International Atomic Agency. The incidence of many forms of cancer has been found to be significantly higher in the vicinity of nuclear plants.</p>
<p>But the World Health Organization estimates that, although radioactivity is a serious threat in some places, a significant number of cancers are now the result of <a href="https://www.who.int/cancer/prevention/en/" target="_blank">exposure to environmental toxins</a>.</p>
<p>Sales of chemicals, including the most toxic, have increased the profits of the global chemical industry from US$1.8 trillion in 2012 to $4.3 trillion in 2017. Between 70,000 and 100,000 chemicals are currently on the world market, and another 1,000 new chemicals are being introduced each year.</p>
<p>No health or environmental data are made available for most of these chemicals, and no more than 10 per cent of them are being tested for possible adverse health effects.</p>
<p>Health Canada and our other public health "guardians" prefer to wait until the deadly effects of a chemical become so obvious -- and claim so many victims -- that they are finally forced to ban or restrict its use. They fail or refuse to admit that cancer is mainly a preventable disease and that steps to prevent it should take precedence over belated attempts to cure it.</p>
<p><strong>Political malfeasance</strong></p>
<p>Such a preventive approach would be based on the "precautionary principle" -- putting the onus on the manufacturer of a chemical to prove it's safe instead of waiting for the subsequent toll of sickness and death to prove it's not.</p>
<p>Such a positive reversal of priorities, however, is fiercely opposed -- not just by the manufacturers of these carcinogenic products, but also by the many other industries that use them in the production of their own goods.</p>
<p>Such a bad business coalition, of course, would not be allowed to cause so many preventable early deaths if it were not for the connivance of politicians. Even when a chemical has irrefutably been proven harmful, its immediate ban by a government is by no means certain. We experienced several incidents of such political malfeasance in Canada and the United States, when many thousands of people continued to be prescribed detrimental drugs and undergo injurious medical procedures even after their baneful effects had been revealed. </p>
<p>Take Vioxx, for example. A few decades ago, this dangerous drug continued to be prescribed even after it was found to have caused thousands of heart attacks. The specious rationale, believe it or not, was that a "risk assessment" had found that it benefited more patients than it killed!</p>
<p>In sharply denouncing this malignant practice, biologist Joe Thornton cited its two fatal defects: 1) It foolishly assumes that testing of this sort can identify all the ways that every individual chemical can cause harm to humans and the environment; and 2) it ignores the centuries-long duration of many chemicals and their tendency to move from place to place.</p>
<p><strong>Thousands of Vioxx victims</strong></p>
<p>Testifying before a U.S. Senate committee looking into the Vioxx-induced heart attacks of an estimated 100,000 Americans (and probably as many as 10,000 Canadians), <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534432/" target="_blank">Dr. David Graham declared</a> that "such a terrible tragedy could have been prevented, but wasn't." Why not? Because the agency assigned to ensure the safety of pharmaceutical drugs -- the U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- is focused almost entirely on assessing the alleged <em>benefits</em> instead of its potential harm.</p>
<p>"As now structured and operated," Dr. Graham warned, "the FDA is incapable of protecting the country against another Vioxx."</p>
<p>This was not just the opinion of a family physician. Dr. Graham at that time was not only a specialist in pharmacology and epidemiology, but also served as associate director for science and medicine in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety. He knew firsthand about the FDA's preference to protect the interests of the big pharmaceutical companies (which it regards as "clients") instead of protecting the people who take FDA-approved drugs.</p>
<p>All of the criticism levelled by Dr. Graham against the FDA can also regrettably be applied to its Canadian counterpart, Health Canada (which should more aptly be re-named Ill-Health Canada). Don't take my word for it. The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) also took Health Canada to task in the <em>Canadian Medical Association</em><em> Journal</em> <em>(CMAJ)</em> for its continued approval of Vioxx "even though it was aware of the increased risk of cardiovascular adverse effects long before the drug was finally withdrawn from the market."</p>
<p>The <em>CMAJ</em> went on to chastise both the FDA and Health Canada for "putting their resources into assessing the alleged benefits of drugs instead of their potential harms. The current FDA/Health Canada emphasis on 'partnerships' with industry and rapid drug approval conflicts with the public's expectation that these agencies exist to protect them by confining approval of drugs to those that have been thoroughly tested."</p>
<p>Dr. Graham compared the magnitude of the Vioxx carnage to a comparable number of deaths from airline crashes. He estimated that it would have taken the crashes of two to four jetliners <em>every week for five years </em>to add up to the ghastly toll of lives racked up by Vioxx.</p>
<p><strong>Dying from Red Dye</strong></p>
<p>Another stark example of the political tolerance of toxic chemicals was the widespread use of Red Dye 2, an artificial colouring that was widely used in candy bars, cakes, sausages, salad dressing, lipstick, pill coatings, and numerous other products before eventually being recognized as a carcinogen.</p>
<p>It was then promptly banned in Europe and cited as a dangerous ingredient by the World Health Organization. <em>But it continued to be approved for unlimited use in the U.S. and Canada for several more years.</em> Not surprisingly, given that the corporations that made the dye and those that put it in their products wielded enough political influence to keep it on the market.</p>
<p>It is quite understandable, then, why most of the millions of dollars allocated to dealing with cancers and other deadly diseases is spent on "treating" the stricken victims and in costly searches for cures instead of efforts to keep people healthy. Why so little as 5 per cent of funding devoted to prevention? The answer is glaringly obvious: Because the higher the rate of illness, the higher the profits of the pharmaceutical companies and those that manufacture X-ray machines and other high-tech medical devices.</p>
<p>As long as cancers are profitable and health unprofitable, prevention will be neglected, confined mainly to advising patients not to smoke or get fat while they continue to be assailed by environmental toxins. A comparison of the health-care spending of its member nations by the OECD a few years ago found that Canada's spending of only a meagre 5 per cent of total health-care financial resources on prevention was one of the lowest recorded.</p>
<p>So the virulent and uncontrolled exposure to carcinogens now affects everyone in Canada to varying degrees and duration, but remains unexamined and ignored by our business and political leaders. Some studies, however, have been made by public non-profit agencies that have listed the number, nature, and concentration of the chemicals that now pollute our air, water, soil, and food.</p>
<p><strong>Chemical toxins in our bodies</strong></p>
<p>Probably the scariest study was <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/canadians-a-toxic-lot-study-finds/article989610/" target="_blank">conducted by Environmental Defence Canada</a>, which tested the blood of 11 volunteers across the country for the presence of 88 toxic chemicals. It found that every one of these Canadians -- including the renowned wildlife artist Robert Bateman -- had dozens of these contaminants in their bodies.</p>
<p>However, because only 11 people were tested (such elaborate tests are quite expensive), Health Canada dismissed the results as "not statistically significant." This was the typical reaction of an agency with such a dubious record of health-care protection. The fact that the 11 volunteers varied in age, gender, location, occupation and lifestyle, and that every one of them had chemically-tainted blood was surely <em>very</em> significant.</p>
<p>As Dr. Rick Smith, former executive director of the agency, argued in responding to the test results, "The bottom line is that we are all polluted. It doesn't matter how old we are, how clean-living we are. We all carry large numbers of different pollutants inside us, and these things are accumulating inside our bodies every day."</p>
<p>Bateman was shocked to learn that his body was a repository of 48 toxic elements. Living as he was on British Columbia's idyllic Salt Spring Island, far from any industrial smokestacks, eating mainly organic food, and exercising regularly, his "body burden" of pollutants was still that of an average Canadian anywhere.</p>
<p><strong>Toxins impossible to escape</strong></p>
<p>The 88 chemicals tested for in the study included heavy metals, PCBs, pesticides, and other hormone-disrupting substances. They are so pervasive and are carried so widely by air and water and in the food we eat that, short of living in a glass bubble, it is impossible to avoid them.</p>
<p>However, this accumulation of toxins in our bodies, though inescapable, does not inevitably lead to cancer. A balanced and nutritious diet, ample exercise, and a strong immune system can combine to keep a person cancer-free for life. That's why millions of us are still living into our 80s and 90s. But, unfortunately, many millions more don't have a healthy lifestyle, often because they neglect self-protective measures and sometimes because they simply can't afford it.</p>
<p>That's why they need the help of government services to address the social and economic determinants of ill-health, such as poverty, hunger and homelessness, which weaken people's immune systems and render them more vulnerable to environmental carcinogens. </p>
<p>Tragically, we have the misfortune of living in a country in which preventable cancers will not be prevented if it necessitates curbing corporate profits and achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/meddygarnet/3489151194/in/photolist-6jjP6d-55CCj3-2S39YQ-5zE7j8-32rmV-mhqyA-6uzCNX-6uDRmE-7xPLib-yNHHq-fq4PQ2-fMrHEC-BoB6Pe-2kzBv2-dYQg2J-6uzEEM-9m11Hp-6117es-2HuCG-EbV6v1-cPQgvs-bEBcd1-eDdY9E-rCUprL-bsN2qc-5oMNX5-vSEJCG-tQe26-5Ng2w5-8m7y6J-9kP5j4-ng5BU9-5BfRMi-HNxMK-hFjUqQ-8ngQFM-afZXu7-ihq4C7-7P1qz9-8cC4Nj-4BTQYs-CP9ZYM-ntSaHw-ejxgR5-4PD1JD-ntPUx6-gd4vyB-fpA28V-5QqKjx-aEqJmU" target="_blank">Morgan/Flickr</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:43:58 +0000the views expressed159576 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/04/cancers-are-preventable-wont-be-if-it-requires-curbing#comments Today's dissenters not burned at the stake, just ridiculed, disparaged, and blacklisted http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/04/todays-dissenters-not-burned-stake-just-ridiculed-disparaged
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ed Finn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-for-node field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://rabble.ca/sites/default/files/styles/large_story_850px/public/Giordano_Bruno_in_Campo_de%27_fiori.jpg?itok=iziYxOWE" width="1180" height="600" alt="Statue of Giordano Bruno in Campo dei Fiori. Photo: Livioandronico2013/Wikimedia Commons" title="Statue of Giordano Bruno in Campo dei Fiori. Photo: Livioandronico2013/Wikimedia Commons" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The brooding statue of Giordano Bruno in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome attracts few tourists. Among those who do stop to look at it, fewer still know who Bruno was and why he has been so esteemed. But he is widely remembered in academic and literary circles, and is revered as a hero by many modern dissidents.</p>
<p>Bruno was a 16th-century Dominican friar who quit the order to become an itinerant teacher and philosopher. He was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition.</p>
<p>His "heresies" were many, but the one that most infuriated the Vatican was a view he shared with Galileo (and earlier with Copernicus) that Earth was not the centre of the universe. He wrote several treatises contending that our planet revolves around the sun, and that the stars are distant suns that also probably have planets with sentient life.</p>
<p>This theory, of course, contradicted the Church's teachings that the whole universe rotates around Earth, as God had ordained. And so Bruno was excommunicated, imprisoned for seven years, frequently tortured, and finally executed. He could perhaps have saved his life and regained his liberty if he had recanted his "heresy," as Galileo did, but he adamantly refused to do so.</p>
<p>For his courage and his steadfast defiance of religious fallacy, he has been immortalized by the statue in Rome. He is also the character "Nolan" in James Joyce's <em>Finnegan's Wake.</em> (A Nolan is a citizen of Nola, a town near Naples, where Bruno was born.)</p>
<p>Novelist Morris West wrote a three-act play about Bruno, which was published as a book called <em>The Heretic</em> in 1969 and which I recently re-read. In his preface, West described Bruno as "the quintessential non-conformist of the Middle Ages" -- as the "odd man out" who refused to agree with what the ruling powers (in this case the Church) insisted was true, but which he knew was false.</p>
<p><strong>The fate of today's 'heretics'</strong></p>
<p>West wrote his play as much to honour the heretics of today as to pay homage to the historical Bruno. He said it was a mistake to assume that dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy is tolerated now any more than it was in Renaissance Italy. It's just that what West calls "the mechanics of social control" are much more sophisticated today than they were four centuries ago. Heretics are not jailed, tortured, or burned at the stake any more (at least not publicly in the "civilized" Western industrial countries), but they are subjected to methods of suppression that can be just as effective, if not as physically painful.</p>
<p>"The growth in large monopolies in communication [dedicated to defending the status quo]," said West, "has forced the protester into the streets, where his protest may easily be construed or manipulated into a public disorder. A whole industry has been built around the art of affirmation, but the dignity of dissent is daily denigrated, and the doubter is in disgrace…</p>
<p>"This is why I wrote the story of Giordano Bruno, dead and buried for heresy centuries ago. I could not believe that any man should be required to sell his soul to anyone who promised him order, discipline, social acceptance, and three meals a day."</p>
<p>What the Church feared in medieval times was that Bruno's ideas and books would influence others, and that a growing number of doubters and dissenters would threaten its theology and hence its power. Not having a sophisticated propaganda machine to discredit Bruno, it resorted to brute force to stop him from spreading his blasphemous views.</p>
<p>Today's corporate hierarchy also fears those who challenge its "free market" ideology, especially if they seem to be attracting a large following; but the "church" of the modern ruling elite has no need for the rack or the stake. Its version of the Inquisition is much more subtle. It denounces, ridicules, and disparages the heretics' conflicting opinions, and thus deters their broad acceptance.</p>
<p>I'm referring, of course, to the corporate-owned mass media, arguably the most powerful mechanism for protecting a dominant doctrine that has ever been created.</p>
<p>Those who own and control the newspapers and the TV and radio networks were not so foolish as to try to stifle dissent completely. They allocated a limited amount of space and time for the heretics to propose different policies. This was considered necessary to maintain the illusion of a "free" press, but the dissidents' access to the commercial media -- prior to the emergence of the internet -- was far from sufficient to enable them to reach the public continuously and effectively. And their heretical views were overwhelmed by the unceasing chorus of establishment editorial writers, columnists, and radio hosts, whose main function was to denigrate the dissidents and depict them as cranks and troublemakers.</p>
<p>Occasionally, however, modern-day heretics still managed to garner more public attention and support than our corporate rulers wanted to tolerate. The person deemed a heretic then became the target of a vicious and sustained smear campaign.</p>
<p>This was the fate of populists like Ralph Nader, Jessie Jackson, and Michael Moore in the United States. Here in Canada, Maude Barlow, the eloquent and charismatic chair of the Council of Canadians, became a thorn in the corporate side. With her books, her speeches, and her council's growing membership, she emerged as a steadfast critic of corporate misconduct, and to the CEOs that made her dangerous.</p>
<p>So they unleashed their media attack dogs to bring her into disrepute. Simply to moan, "Oh no, not Maude Barlow again!" was considered enough to discredit her. It didn't -- not immediately -- but it did ultimately result in her being virtually blacklisted as a guest commentator on the TV and radio networks or in the major newspapers.</p>
<p><strong>My <em>Toronto Star</em> column</strong></p>
<p>I had a taste of this kind of treatment back in the 1970s when I was writing a weekly column on labour relations for the<em> Toronto Star.</em> Since I also held a full-time PR job with a union at the time, and since I frequently used the column to snipe at the misdoings of business leaders, I naturally incurred their wrath.</p>
<p>They tried several times to persuade the<em> Star's </em>then managing editor, Martin Goodman, to terminate my column. But Marty was that rarity in the upper echelons of commercial journalism: an editor who refused to bow to corporate dictates. You might say that Marty himself was a heretic, and after he rebuffed my corporate foes for the umpteenth time, they finally gave up and I went on to write the column for 14 years, subjected only to occasional rebukes from pro-business columnists.</p>
<p>But the business barons eventually got rid of my column after Marty tragically and prematurely died of cancer in 1982. He was barely in his grave when the<em> Star's </em>publisher phoned to tell me curtly that my column was "no longer needed."</p>
<p>Now that I'm confined to writing for online journals like rabble<em>,</em> my dissenting views arguably don't reach nearly enough people to make the CEOs uneasy. So I can be safely ignored. But Maude Barlow had a much higher profile. So did other progressive authors and commentators like Linda McQuaig, Jim Stanford, Armine Yalnizyan, and Murray Dobbin.</p>
<p>Of course, with the internet, Facebook, and other digital modes of communication now serving as easily accessible alternatives to the corporate media, it leaves the corporate bigwigs with no workable substitute for the Inquisition.</p>
<p>It's also worth keeping in mind that, although Giordano Bruno continues to inspire and encourage us 420 years after his death, the names of his persecutors -- even that of Pope Clement VIII, who ordered his execution -- have long since been forgotten.</p>
<p><em>Ed Finn </em><em>grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he worked as a printer’s apprentice, reporter, columnist, and editor of that city’s daily newspaper, the </em><em>Western Star</em><em>. His career as a journalist included 14 years as a labour relations columnist for the </em><em>Toronto Star</em><em>. He was part of the world of politics between 1959 and 1962, serving as the first provincial leader of the NDP in Newfoundland. He worked closely with Tommy Douglas for some years and helped defend and promote medicare legislation in Saskatchewan.</em></p>
<p><em>An earlier version of this article first appeared on the CCPA's Behind the Numbers <a href="http://behindthenumbers.ca/2017/01/27/mock-doctrine-elites-silence-dissent/" target="_blank">blog</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giordano_Bruno_in_Campo_de%27_fiori.jpg" target="_blank">Livioandronico2013/Wikimedia Commons</a></em></p>
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</div></div></div>Wed, 03 Apr 2019 14:43:01 +0000the views expressed159241 at http://rabble.cahttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2019/04/todays-dissenters-not-burned-stake-just-ridiculed-disparaged#comments